What the booking platforms take

Of the three deductions that take double digits out of a Bali villa booking, exactly one publishes its rate card.

How to read the numbers on this page. A figure with no marker is quoted from a primary source and linked at the foot of the page. ^reported means the company that charges it publishes no public rate card, so the range comes from trade reporting rather than from the charging party. ^modelled means it came out of the model set out on the methodology page, which you can disagree with line by line.

Airbnb, which will tell you

Airbnb's host service fees are on a public help page with no login and no form. There are two structures and the difference matters:

• Split fee. Airbnb states that most hosts pay 3%, with the guest charged a separate service fee on top.
• Single (host-only) fee. Airbnb states that most hosts pay 15.5% and the remainder typically 14–16%. This structure is mandatory for most traditional hospitality listings, and a villa run by a management company is normally in that group.

So the number that applies to a professionally managed Bali villa is usually the larger one, and an owner who has read “Airbnb charges 3%” somewhere and budgeted for it is out by roughly twelve points of gross.

Booking.com and Agoda, which will not

Neither publishes a public rate card. Booking.com's partner help material states the rate is set in the property's own agreement; Agoda states the rate depends on the property's location and payment model and shows it inside the partner extranet. Both sets of pages refuse to serve anything that is not a browser, which is itself an answer of a kind.

What is in circulation is a band: 10–25%^reported for Booking.com with around 15% typical, and 15–25%^reported for Agoda whose own worked example uses 20% illustratively. This site models with the middle of those bands and marks them everywhere they appear. Read your own contract. If your manager holds the platform relationship, ask which rate your villa is on — the answer is in their extranet and it takes them thirty seconds.

What the mix works out at

A villa is rarely on one platform, so the number that matters is the blend. Across the channel mix this site models — 45% Airbnb, 35% Booking.com, 10% Agoda and 10% direct — platform commission comes to 14.2%^modelled of booking revenue.

That is within a few points of an entire 20% management commission, and it is a layer most owners never itemize because it arrives net: the platform pays out after deducting itself, so unless a statement shows gross booking value against payout, the commission never appears as a number anyone reads. Ask for gross per reservation on your statement. If a statement only shows what arrived, it is hiding this layer by omission rather than by design.

What going direct is actually worth

On the model at USD 6,000 of monthly gross, shifting from the default mix to half of bookings direct moves owner net from USD 1,932 to USD 2,274. Over a year that is roughly USD 4,108.

Three caveats, because that number is easy to overread. Direct bookings need somewhere to land, a payment route that works for an Australian card and an Indonesian account, and a cancellation policy you wrote rather than inherited. Direct demand is largely repeat and referral demand, so it builds from platform bookings rather than replacing them. And a manager on a percentage has no obvious reason to build your direct channel for you unless the contract says the commission applies to direct bookings too — check whether yours does, because that clause cuts both ways and is worth reading before you assume which way.

Three things about platform commission that are not the percentage

The rate gets all the attention. These three move real money and almost never come up in a conversation with a management company.

What the commission is calculated on

Not always the same base as your management commission. Platforms generally calculate on the total reservation value the guest is charged, which can include cleaning fees you set and, depending on the arrangement, tax collected on the stay. If your cleaning fee is high and your nightly rate is low, more of your revenue is sitting in the commissionable base than you would guess from the headline rate. Worth one look at an actual reservation breakdown rather than at a rate card.

Cancellations

A canceled booking that you keep part of is revenue, and platforms generally take their share of what you keep. A cancellation policy that looks generous to guests is therefore also a policy about your own commission bill, and the manager who set it may never have framed it to you that way. Ask which policy your listings run and why.

Who holds the guest relationship

Platform commission is the price of demand you did not generate. The corollary is that repeat demand you did generate should not carry it — and whether it does depends entirely on whether a returning guest books direct or goes back through the same app. Almost nothing in a standard management arrangement pushes them toward the first. If your contract charges the same commission on a direct repeat booking as on a platform one, nobody in the chain except you has a reason to change that.

The line nobody bills for: the channel manager

Keeping one calendar synchronised across four platforms is software, and somebody pays for it, along with the cost of moving money between currencies and accounts. On the model it is 2–4% of gross — small, and worth one question at signing rather than an argument later: who pays for the channel manager and the payment processing, and does it appear on my statement?

Common questions